Bridge Over Troubled Water

The bridge swings over the stream “with ease and power”. It does not just connect banks that are already there. The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream. The bridge designedly causes them to lie across from each other… The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream. Thus it guides and attends the stream through the meadows… Even where the bridge covers the stream, it holds its flow up to the sky by taking it for a moment under the vaulted gateway and then setting it free once more… The bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals… Thus the bridge does not first come to a location to stand in it; rather a location comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge. (Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking)